On Cherries and Pits

"Sadness has a beauty that happiness consumes,
And fragility that penetrates the bones."

But your red and green of this Christmas scene
Carries me through the year celebrating
For red hair a shock of passion and serene
And green eyes bore through souls, knowing.

The pit of the cherry was lost in our grip
Now all solidarity mentions our whisp
Of a friendship, the sweet lullaby,
the task of our friendship is the dear soul's light.

Take our concerns and we'll hold them awhile,
But all of those sermons can't unfurrow our brow
From deep loss and understanding a deeper cost
For giving our dreams and losing our cause.

Sadness Is a Pit.

The broken heart has beauty
That happiness consumes
And fragility that penetrates the bones.

An Update On Us, 2

Well, here we are: Exactly one year and two days in Chicago, one year and one month since Virginia, and two years, two and a half months of marriage. We have been good: museums of art and history and science and industry, zoos and beaches, plays and shows. All with friends and memories of smiles and laughter and mostly warm weather or freshly lain snow.

And we have been busy: busy eating up the remnants of summer, busy gritting my teeth against winter, busy laughing at Michael at how giddy he is for colder weather, and busy catching our breath between one visitor and the next. We have never felt so much love from Kansas and Texas and Virginia and Tennessee and Kentucky as we have from all the beloved that has come to spend time with us and give us all their well-wishes.

Michael has been recognized by theater critics, and I'm, again, recognizing that hard work usually equates in good grades and happy supervisors.

So, without too many specifics, we are good and busy. And we love our friends.
See you soon,

a

A Cheesy Poem, But For What It's Worth, Sincere.

Take my hand, we will drive for a while.
My love, (my love): your laughter, your strength, your smile.
Take this land, you're the new oath, religion.
And you're all, my love: your sweet coat of wisdom.
You're my new shade of love.
You're my blue cake of goodness.
Polystyrene cities hold nothing against us.
The sun (the misery) is light with our haughtiness.
Take these plans, they're the future for us.
For all the time we've had, we're the one-eyed light abyss.
Take mirrored fans; we'll reflect on those shunned
My dear friend, lover of this ship, sweet opinion
You're my bias of bliss, without which I'd sink through blue.
For my love, for my love. Is you.

Of All Careers, You Can't Just Jump Into Art.

Once was the heart of a poet's song,
And once was the wind of the flutist's song
Forever the mind of the 20's now,
And often the lime of the blue collar brow
For the sheen of twisted word
And for the seamless, lusted bird
She was the curt and culted third
Of a loving, forlorned throng.

Honesty

The pesty warrior chant,
Pestulant, penitant, pretention.
Take my mastication, it's pure, see.
And eyes' masturbation: it's sweet glee
(For someone.
Other than me.)

The cerebral exercise is a dulling fight,
If I work for my money as others think right,
If I don't barf emotion as every poet does,
If I don't fart contortion to see my problems.
For the tomb
Simplicity

Go mark your territory, claim it yours.
Mark the same for the soldier's war.
No. Mark your thoughts and hold them there:
Not high up but where your heart pumps hair
For a friend,
Possibly.

The Wheat of Tomorrow

Body butter and sweet merengue pie
Shake the dust off of lulled and sleeping thighs
Up through the heart and into the brain
Today's actions are memories' grain.

And one, named Sun, was once saved by the lighthouse

Were you my temperate child?
My sweet liaison, to untasted wild?
And where was my grounded lighthouse
When all I felt were raucous waves while
Still on land, hugging stone.

Rock of cool breeze and sand in toes
Sand that's sucked to wet and wild throes
life bubbles float while heavy bones sink
Salty wind in air-bits keep, floats
alive in hand, not alone.

An update on us.

I wanted to let everyone know that I found a job.
An actual job, not telemarketing nonsense. I’m a billing assistant, which isn’t my specialty, but it’s a good organization, and it pays decent, and it works.

And, just in case you didn’t know, I started my masters of Nonprofit Administration at North Park University. I’m taking two classes, and I am really enjoying it. Real, meaty stuff, not flouncy, subsistence learning stuff.

Also, we might be moving upstairs because we found black mold in our apartment. As well as cracks in a few walls and a few other issues. It’s been a great apartment, and we’ll be sad to leave it, but upstairs has so much more ROOM. We have really been crammed in this little thing for six months, and while it’s been fun, we could definitely use more space.

Michael also got another part in another play. I wish I would have been keeping better count on the auditions he has done, and the parts he has gotten in the last seven months, because I’ve been saying that he’s gotten about half of the parts he’s auditioned for, but I’m thinking it might be closer to 75%. In a city like this, that is really amazing…

I’ve officially figured out how to make a mean steak. Official, because the steaks I have cooked have turned out great about four times in a row. Come visit us and we’ll celebrate having friends with steaks.

Michael started a filmblog way back a couple of months ago. But if you didn’t know about it, it’s right here: www.macguffinfilmblog.wordpress.com.
And that’s all I’ll put for now. It has been one of the hardest six months of my life to finally get here with school and a job. But now that I’m here, it’s very sweet, and a lot of work.

Call of the Doldrums

Wait upon the seas my dear, at one spot near the equator
'til all that's left of moving wind is longing deep, near the end
Of soul's calamity, where the sun beats down. At first: serenity
'Comes uncomfortable sound of nothing singing on and on,
Nothing rattling nothings' tongue; A dangerous liaison
To us from storms that dwell and stir from the bellies' groan.

"Day after day" the bloody sun laughs at lips that crack with smiles
and bleed with spoken epitaphs, cause water leaves no water for us
And thirsty seas challenge mad men's rafts. But if we give up
Then the fate is ours for betrayal comes from the weight on our shoulders
And so we sit and listen to the song from the belly's deep, restless moan
But lo...if the wind would just pick up, as safety's call from God's mention.

But no... the song of the deep has called and commanded sleep to fall on all:
Red Rum tipped lips share loneliness from one's blood drips
And home-sickness. Chase the dreams of land and love, chase the scenes
Of past love's fall, but nothing stings for at last the small endless bleating
Of desire is gall. My life, my loves, my actions not entering the twinings
Of my century: just dire still, and dreadful call of all things dark from all below.

But lo…and no, the stillness creeps on and tickles still and mindless throngs
Of begging creeds and mentioned crypts bending skill to listlessness.
We're in the wake of walking dead on broken sidewalks from the fallen dread
From planks of ships too high up to see but casting shadows on misery.
Call on the sleep for one last thread of hope to see and wake instead
Call on sweet dreams where no hearts bled their last retort to those well-fed.

Self

My Self is my heart:
My ever reaching,
Never attaining
And always being
An artist.

Doldrums, Us

I can talk about who you are
What you mean to be
Who you want to be,

But the limes of our lives
Seem trivial in pursuit
Of purple skies and little
Men in green suits.

And the heart of our lies
Want heroes with guitars
And feelings on our tongue
To shoot champagne-cork wars.

We know well, yet know not at all.
We long to tell, but can't tell a soul.

I can talk about anything at all
But all I say is hurting the doldrums
Of who we are.

Grey Skies of Chicago, Part 2

It is not the isolation of which the soul yearns to fix. No, it is.
It is the solidarity of which the mind yearns to experience.
Community of the soul for the soul needs rest.
Soldiering for the mind for our minds are a nest
Of burning bushes and childhood lullabies
Where relationships end right and lives
Have reason to fight.

I tire of a mind that wonders too much
And analyzes for the time too much
And tries for the time too hard
On things not known the better of.

Black wool under white snow flakes
Shivering against avoided cold
Shoulders parallel to the abstract
Painting, streaked with reds
And golds and pinks and greens.

Two Dilettantes of Life: The Liver and the Thinker

Life lived and dreams sought, opinions voiced, ideas fought
This is the making of the life lived, not thought
Making marmalade pies and chocolate cherry drops
Being the doer, bringing the weed. Finding the lover, emotional bleed.
Friends of all, enemies of some. Eating, brawling: fat lipped with crumbs.

Thinking, in the head rehashing, dreaming of whatnot
This is the making of the philosopher, genius or not.
Eating when something has to quiet the empty lot
Being the thinker, think of the deed. Wanting the lover, emotional feed.
Friends of few, enemies: none. Reading, lulling: fat brained with hesitations.

Grey Skies of Chicago

A Girl in Grey on the long brown couch
Under the abstract painting
Of streaks of red and pink and gold and green,
The girl doesn't see the lines on the wall,
Just the pasty white screen
With no new emails
Of many job postings.
20? 30? How many different resumes?
How many different interviews?
The Girl doesn't try to count them all
It's easier to keep going
When the statistics of the past
Are kept under wraps
So the next resume can go out
With an exclamation point.

Good Luck Charm

Beauty is fleeting and mine just slipped away
For the bent babel tower lured me astray
From ice cream laughter and sweet lullaby love
To pining for the never-had and self-conscious shove.
Pint of pine tree vacations and baby bear coves
For sweet temptations of burning evergreen incense rub.
Today is the daynow I see it all clear: my hanging flower bird bath
Is full of damned persons' tears. But put pretty words together
Watch how they steer cause I don't need rhyme or reason
For beauty: just try dear, be sincere.

Glasses To See Through

Thanks again for everything:
Pock-marked thoughts and offerings,
For times I didn't hold you near
But tore at sinews held by tears.

Thank the gin for remembering
The late night talks and memories
And times you had my back or fought;
I said yes, but your end was naught

But new sinews, with tighter strings.

Review of Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (1957)

"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."
- Ayn Rand

Atlas Shrugged, or "The Bible of Selfishness" as it is often referred to, was Rand's main attempt to put the total of her philosophies into novel form. She considered Objectivism to be simply "the philosophy for living on earth... [What] a man must think and act if he is to live the life proper to man." When I started her book, I was interested in what prompted critics to place what seemed to me as such a bold stamp as a bible that revolves around the polar opposite of the bible of which most of us are familiar: selfishness. When actually reading her book, however, the intrigue that initially led me to her book was followed by a stark realization of it's wordiness, and then followed by a daunting feeling of realizing how much wordiness I had yet to go through to the end.

In regards to wordiness , it is one of the longest novels ever written in any European Language according to Wikipedia, and the climactic speech by one character, John Galt, is held within a daunting 56 pages without interruptions after the first paragraph. Following a distaste for feeling overworked with the details of the self-interested views, I found myself putting the book aside for a couple of months at different intervals during the whole of its intercourse to let my mind rest and then eventually mull over the words and works of the characters in the book.

The basic concept of the story deals with great business franchises such as those around the time of 1940's America and the hard working people who have worked to build them up as so. In the unfolding of the plot, though, these people who focus on productivity find themselves in a battle of words against the force used by those who feed on the ideals that allow them to rely on someone else for their living. Taking the stance that man does not need to work hard for better wages eventually drains the common man of value and life, and forces certain work-oriented CEO's to quietly give up all that they have worked for and 'shrug' their responsibilities, many never to be seen again. In short, the characters were black and white, either senseless, lazy, indifferent annoying people with bad hygiene or intellectual, superior beings that seemed to have a mind to make love to one woman and our (almost) beloved main character, Dagny Taggart.

This is where the title of the book comes in, as Atlas, symbolizing the worker with the weight of the world on his shoulders, merely shrugs and gives up the responsibility of everyone else to what Rand alludes to as their self-pitying doom of laziness.

What is unrealistic about the plot is the idea that so many (almost all) would fall into the ideologies and belief system of the 'lazy' or 'evil' side so easily without question. I might add here that the belief system of the lazy side includes religions such as Christianity and Buddhism or pretty much any thought that states that man needs saving due to his/her sinful and selfish nature. The 'good' side quickly retorts that they will not be ruled by a god that doesn't even give them a chance to be good, but claims them bad before they are born, and where they must give up taking care of #1. What was also perplexing about the plot included dead end subplots like a 'death ray' type of invention that was put in place to merely make people more fearful. The all-powerful death ray was demonstrated once, then quickly went by the wayside.

Atlas Shrugged has been a very influential book for many people, including the likes of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, who are currently working towards a film version. In the book's first release, it received critical reviews, but later has been rated the number one novel of the 20th century by Modern Library. On the other hand, Rand was rated as #18 on the "list of most overrated, trends or events of the 20th century."

Perhaps it is so highly regarded because once a person gets through a book of that physical weight, it's easy to think that it must have been worth something, all that time spent reading such a thick book. While I found that the Objectivist views of money and work ethic makes sense, I strongly disagree with the loose views on sex and that money is always valued over time (and thus relationships). I suppose with a book that thick, there are bound to be views that a reader disagrees with. Though the philosophical material brought up many good conversations, at the end of the day, I really think that the celebrations of freedom and thought came when the reader just got to the end of the book.

Sympathy for Trying and Trying Still

To catch the leaf falling from the tree
Still living, grief grown and still loving
As has been loved: completely.

To hold my heart struggling to be free
From dream death, curt rain in a parched sleep;
Drift as drink bleeds, springs free.

A Thought...

Call on judgement to rightly assess
The inactive or the overstressed
In each position; but i digress,
For all's obsession is curse or bless.
An end for one is for another
The while of stone with one foot tethered
Yet even slowed, in common hours
We strive for faith: one or another.